Roku on Wednesday rolled out its new Streaming Stick device, essentially a wireless dongle about the size of a standard USB flash drive that you plug into your television for an instant IQ upgrade, transforming your dumb box into a Smart TV. Despite its diminutive size, the Streaming Stick is packed with built-in Wi-Fi, memory, and the same software as found in Roku's set-top box.

Come next month, Netflix will officially be in the original content game with the premier of its first series, Lillyhammer. The show stars Sopranos alum Steven Van Zandt as a former mobster in witness protection. Van Zandt’s character is moved to Lillehammer, Norway, and as you can imagine, shenanigans ensue.

The Internet has brought the concept of content creation to the masses in the form of social media, blogs, and personal websites. People with interests of all types are able to share ideas and passions with likeminded individuals throughout the world. But as the Internet has become more open to content created by end-users, competition has increased in the form of other competing messages, making it increasingly important for content creators to embrace new forms of media, like video blogs or podcasts.

Reed Hastings and everyone else behind the trenches at Netflix would probably like a do-over for all of 2011. They're not getting one, and for Hastings, the company's CEO, he's not getting the full amount of his stock option award next year, either. Instead, he'll receive exactly half of what he would have been entitled to had things not gone so wrong for Netflix in recent months, but don't feel too bad for Hastings.

Rhapsody just went platinum. After a decade in the business, Rhapsody can finally celebrate amassing more than a million paying subscribers in the United States, which is still well short of Spotify's legion of 2.5 million paying subscribers worldwide, but it does qualify Rhapsody as the largest premium music subscription service in the U.S. To celebrate the occasion, Rhapsody boss Jon Irwin shaved his head, just as he promised he would.

Western Digital's WD TV media player family just got a little bit better with the addition of streaming movie service Vudu. That's in addition to several new sports and entertainment services WD rolled out to the WD TB Live and WD TV Live Hub media players, both of which are already content rich with support for Netflix, Hulu Plus, Blockbuster, CinimaNow, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Facebook, and a bunch of others.

Football fans will have plenty of ways to tune into the Super Bowl and watch Tom Brady and Co. decimate the opponent (this editor might be a tad bit biased) in 2012. That's because for the first time ever, NBC and the NFL will stream the Super Bowl online at NBCSports.com and NFL.com through SNF Extra, giving viewers access to special features like DVR controls, various camera angles, in-game highlights, and other interactive bits, all in HD.

Netflix shareholders haven't been thrilled with Netflix's direction the past few months. After announcing a spin-off of its DVD-by-mail rental business and higher prices for streaming and DVD services combined, subscribers raged until Netflix reversed course on severing its DVD arm, but the company didn't relent on recent price hikes. It's been paying a price in subscriber losses ever since. Enter unhappy investors, though talk of Verizon taking over the streaming service has them smiling once again.

The sky is falling for movie lovers! The post office recently announced that it was closing down nearly half of its processing centers starting in early in 2012, which could eliminate next-day delivery services – and add an extra day of processing to Netflix deliveries. No worries, you can just shift the slack to streaming, right? (Possibly) wrong – as we recently reported, ISPs are considering implementing tiered data pricing to squeeze more cash out of heavy media streamers. So is all lost? Could your ABC Family Movies addiction be in danger of extinction? Not if you’re a Comcast customer. The company apparently has no plans of switching to tiered data pricing.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told attendees at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York that streaming video will grow to replace cable as the viewing option of choice within 3-5 years. In reality, streaming video could leapfrog ahead of cable even sooner than that, but as Netflix gets ready to renew contracts with Hollywood studios, he might want to keep his cards closer to his chest.